Sil the Composer
by Lady Celebare
Summary: There were other lives to be heard behind the velvet curtain of the Rouge. This is the story of one, Sil, a woman who gave everything to have her music heard, and her conflict with everyone's favorite poet. Not a Mary-Sue! R for adult themes
1. Sil

Title: Sil the Composer  
  
Rating: R... for language and because it might turn into a lime. Don't worry, it won't be for a few chapters, and I'll warn you before it comes up.  
  
Summary: Essentially a 'back story' for the Moulin Rouge, a behind-the-scenes of the preparation for the play, if you will. I was inspired by working on the set for my high school play, and by a Moulin Rouge role-play in which I attempted to find some character who was not a Diamond Dog...   
  
Note: Christian gets a bad portrayal in this fic in the next chapter, but only for a moment or two. I love the boy, really! I'm just trying to write this from Sil's point of view...  
  
  
  
I am Sil the Lone One, Sil the envied, Sil the black-hearted. I am Sil the compassionate, Sil the cold, Sil the forsaken. I am Sil the healer, Sil the wounded, Sil the lost... but above all else, I am Sil the Composer. My songs were my life, so much that I put myself in terrible agony just to hear them played before a crowd of depraved men... Indeed, I feel as if I haven't written my own life-story: someone else holds the quill, and I am but the character. I could never bring myself to write a tragedy.  
Ah, but what do I dwell upon such sadness for? I've also been called Sil the sardonic, Sil the humorous. I don't find myself particularly funny, but perhaps you'll get some entertainment from this. It is my hope that you will also learn from it. Above all, though, treat it as an art. Too few of my works have been treated as such...  
  
~-~-~-  
  
My story beings much like any other. I was born in a small English village to poor parents, and it's a miracle that I learned to write as well as I did. My childhood was peppered with sparse meals and penny-pinching. Early on I vowed to leave the dirty, crime-ridden city of my birth and make something of myself. Sound familiar? Every child born to such a life dreams of this. When I was old enough, at the age of 18, I stole aboard a cargo train and fled to the southern coast of Britain. From there I earned passage across the channel by working aboard a small craft, and eventually found myself in Paris. I thought the great city of art would help me find a way to share my talents with the world. Instead, all I found was rejection. No one wanted a woman composer's work, especially a foreign woman. I ended up in a poor collection of apartments and bars up on a hill, a town known as Monmarte. There I was forced into artless forms of work: singing in bars before crowds of drunken bohemians, searching dumpsters for food, begging on the street. My life revolved around scrounging a few moldy franks.  
After a few months in the town I realized that my life wasn't going according to my grand plan. I had to find some solid work, and soon: I was starving, and the weather was getting to me. I was worse off now than I had been back home. So I inquired among the local shopkeepers about jobs, but each time I was turned down, no matter how menial the job was. I was laughed at, cursed at, and mocked. No one wanted a woman worker, especially not a foreign one. It seemed my place of birth was keeping me from succeeding. Dispirited, I nearly turned for home when I received a small piece of advice from a foul-smelling bartender. After laughing in my face he told me to go seek employment at the Moulin Rouge, a nightclub that was constantly seeking new employees. In my naïveté I didn't realize what he meant.  
The proprietor of the said nightclub seemed friendly enough, if a bit intimidating. He was a mountain of a man with flaming red hair and a voice to match his bulk. He was quite interested in me; here was a place that wanted foreign women. Why, I didn't guess until later. I allowed myself to trust him, for in my youth I was a trusting sort of person. All that was about to change: Just as my hopes began to rise, the proprietor began explaining my duties to me - how to treat the 'customers', what they liked, what my duties would be - and I was horrified. I suppose my shock and disgust was revealed on my face, for his next words were a question.  
"Isn't that why you came here?" he asked.  
"No... no!" I replied, a bit more violently than I should have. "I came here because I write music. I thought you were looking for a composer!"  
Zeidler's face fell somewhat, then brightened again. "Oh, of course! You can do that on the side-"  
"No!" I shouted, standing. "No, that's... that's wrong! I didn't come here to offer myself to be sold!"  
"Wait, don't leave!" Zeidler said swiftly. "Show me some of your work. I'll see if we can use you."  
Still wary, but desperate for work, I agreed to demonstrate my talents to him. I pulled my latest creation from my bag and presented it to him, trepidation and fear eating at my heart. What if he didn't like it? My works were like children to me. To give them to this strange, terrible man was like presenting my very soul to be stepped upon.  
The great rhino of a man scrutinized the work carefully, studying the notes and lyrics. Apparently he had some background in music, for before long he was humming the tune. A little of my apprehension faded.  
"This is quite good," he said finally, handing the sheet back to me. "If you can provide compositions appropriate to this establishment, I'll hire you." A shrewd, cunning smile crossed his face suddenly. "Of course, we can't offer you much..."  
Eager to get a job where my talents could be expressed, I blundered into a contract that would keep me forever clinging to the Rouge. "All I need is housing and food," I said. That's exactly what I received: nothing more, nothing less. The other female employees received a commission based on how much they earned, but since I had nothing to sell, I had no way of earning extra money.  
The contract was signed, and my first piece, delivered. This small victory brightened my heart, but only until I was led to my new dwelling. I was to sleep amongst the Diamond Dogs - those who weren't sleeping with other customers, that is. They disliked me almost immediately, for I had what they did not: freedom, and a body that was my own. It may sound haughty and condescending when I say that they were jealous, but it's the truth, plain and simple.   
Truth - or lack thereof - played a great part in my life at the Rouge. I never told the Dogs who I was or where I was from; they all thought I was some rich musician from England who had come to mock them. This was totally illogical, of course, but many things at the Moulin Rouge were illogical. They didn't trust the fact that I spoke their language as well as my own. How could I explain my gift to them? I couldn't explain why I spoke French so fluently, nor could I explain my fierce, fanatical need for solitude. Among the Dogs I was alone in my fear of being touched. Even an innocent, friendly squeeze of the shoulder caused me to flinch.  
My talents and my differences made me an outcast. The only friends I ever had were among the newest Dogs, the youths that came to Zeidler because they thought they had no other choice. They were my friends until they learned that I was an outcast. So desperate were they to fit in that they dropped my friendship like a hot iron in order to find acceptance among the pitiless hearts of the Dogs. Those who once confided in me mocked me. The only friend I ever managed to keep was an ambitious woman named Nini. She never spoke of her connection to me in public, but it was a small comfort to know that I was not completely alone.  
I earned a cold reputation among the women of the Rouge. I was distant, true, but only because I didn't want to get hurt. All the vicious names they called me - bitch, slut, Zeidler's whore - hurt so terribly that I was forced to build a protective wall around my heart. I adopted an air of haughty indifference that only added to their hatred of me. By day my face was a featureless mask, but by night it was stained with tears.  
Why didn't I leave, then?  
Quite simply, I was tied to the Moulin Rouge by my deep need to hear my music heard. There were moments of sheer bliss when I heard the notes of my creation - however poorly played - reverberating through the halls and garden of the Rouge. I knew that my music was full of terrible words and depraved meaning, but the sound was there. Listening to it was like a drug. I couldn't survive without it. Somehow the joy of hearing my works played for the public was worth the mental agony of my life.  
I lived at the Moulin Rouge for five terrible years. In that time I saw sights to make a lesser soul blanch with horror, disgust, pity. I saw young girls sold to old men for a few coins. I saw older women kill themselves through drink in their attempts to drown out the shambles of their life. I saw women die of disease, both those transmitted through sex and those bred by the close, unsanitary confines of our home. I saw what happened behind the velvet curtain, the realities of the Rouge, so to speak.   
In a strange twist of fate, the title of 'healer' was added to my name - women carrying the offspring of male customers came to me, for they were outcast as well. It happened often in that palace of sin, but no matter how inevitable, it still brought shame. A pregnant Dog was somehow worse, more of a sinner, than one who had never carried life - even if the circumstances of conception were far beyond her control. They came to me, and I cared for them. O kept them alive until Zeidler found them and threw them on the street. More than once I hid them until the child was born, and used my meager resources to find them a home. These were the same women who had so deeply wounded me with words. For harboring these poor, pitiful creatures, I was even further shunned. Sil the midwife they called me with a sneer, Sil the she-demon.  
And then one day, as with any great story, everything changed.  
  
  
End Notes: Constrictive criticisms are very, very appreciated! I need them! Really! By the way, 'Sildragus' is Diamond Dogs in elvish (Tolkein, that is), so that's where Sil got her name. Other than that, it doesn't have much of a meaning.  
  
Next Chapter: Alexander 


	2. Alexander

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Notes: And here the plot actually beings… O.o I'm terribly sorry for any anit-Christian sentiment in the following chapter. I'm considering redeeming him, only 'cos I can't stand to see my favorite 'lil Poet boy be turned evil in my own fanfic… er, all right, so he's not evil. He's just… in the way.

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To Saturn: Gracias for your review! This chapter is written only 'cos you reviewed. Being reviewless makes me sad (sniffle)

The year was 1890; the season, spring. Only a little while before the Poet's story beings, my own tale took a turn for the better. A new project was suggested for the nightclub, and I was at the forefront of it. Zeidler, desperate to fund his bizarre obsession with electricity, launched an ambitious plot to turn the nightclub into a theater. Plays, he reasoned, brought in far more revenue than prostitution. I agreed with him, and in his dingy office we discussed his plans. The play would most likely be written by a gang of Bohemians led by a dwarf named Toulouse Letrec, but the music would be mine to compose, no matter who objected. The weeks following our discussion flew by as I wrote, keeping up with the demand for new dance music as well as composing pieces for the play. I was able to ignore everything and everyone around me, and for the first time in six years, I was happy.

As Zeidler's idea took shape, new people began appearing at the Rouge. Stagehands looking to get in early on the project came to Zeidler in droves, along with painters down on their luck and poverty-stricken two-bit actors looking for work. This influx of men not wealthy enough to pay for sex confused the Diamond Dogs, but only briefly: soon there was a roaring trade in cheap human lives just outside the walls of the Rouge. If it could bring in extra cash, the Dogs were willing to do it; all except the star of the Rouge, of course. Zeidler reserved her for the richest and most influential of his clientele. Poor girl. She was the only one I had never hated, even though she looked upon me with contempt. 

For the most part I ignored these new workers, unless they had something to do with my music. The singers I spoke to, and then only briefly and dismissively. None of them could do justice to my works. I had little to do with these men, until Alexander arrived.

He was a stagehand, but perhaps something more as well. He could dance, sing, and even act a little, but his passion was for building. He had a fascination with creating stage sets; he told me that it was like making a new world, creating a life. From the first moment I set eyes upon him, I knew we were kindred spirits. He didn't attract much notice, probably because he wasn't interested in the Diamond Dogs, and perhaps because he wasn't spectacularly attractive. He stood six feet, six inches tall, all lanky limbs and long legs. He wasn't particularly muscular, but he could easily pull his weight with the rest. His hair was a tousled, messy black, and his skin was perpetually tanned. His eyes were what caught my attention first: bright green orbs that could pull the truth out of untruthful souls. His voice was soft, gentle, but commanding, tinged only lightly with the accent of his native Spain. He told me later that he had been all over Europe, hitching rides on trains since his thirteenth birthday. I was impressed: at 25, he'd seen more places than most aged scholars. I felt he understood part of the reason I was here in this hellhole.

Our first meeting was purely by chance. I was walking towards Zeidler's office, and he had just come from there. We probably never would have noticed each other if we hadn't run straight into each other. I, myself, wasn't much to look at; I had cut my hair short because it was easier to manage and because that, along with my baggy clothing and over-large beret, helped to hide my feminine form. In any event, we did run into each other quite literally, his six-foot frame bowling my own five-foot four-inch one over like chafe. I fell to the floor, my papers flying everywhere. He swiftly knelt to help me up.

"Don't touch me," I snarled, leaping quickly to my feet. I desperately began gathering up my papers, afraid that his great callused hands would crumple them up and destroy them. Rather than crinkling them with inept fingers, though, he gently gathered them up, brushed them off, and handed them back. I rather nastily snatched them away.

"Where are you bound?" he asked in perfect French.

"I've got a meeting with Zeidler," I said shortly. Without making any further conversation, I pushed past him. I thought that was the last I'd seen of the tall, Spanish stranger.

However, the arrival of Christian the Poet threw us together again in a flurry of activity. He had been made the head of writing, I was the musician, and Alexander was in charge of building the stage. The three of us met often to discuss the play and to fit our different areas of expertise together. From the outset I resented Christian's position. He was, in my mind, taking over my job, and I felt ousted and unappreciated. What business did this young upstart have in barging in and taking my work from me? He was too kind of nature to hate, though, and my resentment soon faded to barely noticeable irritation. Alexander, meanwhile, was overjoyed with the situation.

"Sil the Composer, Christian the Poet, and Alexander the Artist, what a group we make," he laughed one day as we all sat down to go over the script. "I bet not even your bohemian friends are half so diverse," he smiled towards Christian.

"You'd be surprised," Christian replied.

Alexander's quiet, genuine laughter was infectious, and I smiled despite myself. Feeling slightly humorous I added, "I'm sure my position is odd indeed to you both. A woman composer in a den of prostitution! It's quite unheard of, I bet."

"I believe many of the women here have hidden talents," Christian said, and I detected a hint of defensiveness in his voice. That would puzzle me for quite some time.

"Indeed, they do," Alexander agreed, smiling in my direction. Unbidden, my pulse raced just a little faster, and I'm sure I blushed. Flustered, I made quite a production of finding the right page in my script. There was something about him…

While I attempted to sort out my strange feelings for this tall, quiet artist, a new mystery was unfolding among the women of the Rouge. It involved the Sparkling Diamond Satine, and it didn't take me long to put two and two together. Satine was often away, presumably to entertain the rich Duke who was financing the play. I noticed, however, that the Duke often warmed his bed with one of the other Dogs; Satine must be using her talents elsewhere. 

Everything came together one morning when I departed early for Christian's garret to deliver a new piece of music for approval. I knocked on his door, but there was no answer. Miffed and irritated that my morning might be wasted for a fruitless trip out of the Rouge, I opened the door and stalked into the room. The first thing I noticed was the inordinate amount of clothing strewn across the floor, most of it Satine's. I knew she had gone to him late the night before to rehearse… with a sick jolt of horror, I realized what was going on between the poet and the actress. They might ruin everything! I quickly looked around, taking in the scene: rumpled bedsheets, a hastily unbuttoned corset, empty wineglasses on the bedside table. Where were they now? I heard giggling from out on the landing and briefly considered barging in on them and telling them how foolish they were, but what good would that do? In a fatalistic sort of daze I left, leaving the pair to seal their own doom. I didn't know whether they were really in love, nor did I care. Either way they were slowly killing themselves. Either way they were slowly killing me. They were slowly killing Alexander. They were slowly killing all of us.

Half enraged, half hopelessly sad, I left the garret. If they were discovered, the Duke would surely leave. Without the Duke, there would be no one to finance us. Without finances, there would be no play. Without a play… I would have to stop composing. I would have to go out on the streets again. If this endeavor failed, Zeidler would have lost too much money to recover. The Moulin Rouge would die. I would die. I couldn't let that happen. With grim certainty I realized that my silence in the matter was required. I couldn't tell anyone, or else word might get to the Duke… but I _needed_ to tell someone. Now, more than ever, I needed to find someone to pour my pain, my fears, my years of solitude into…

And so I went to Alexander.


End file.
